SOME MORE ECONOMICS

The real job figures: "U.S. job creation continued to move ahead at a steady pace with the announcement Friday that 96,000 non-farm payrolls were added to the economy. Over the past thirteen months 1.9 million new jobs have been created. The unemployment rate stands at a historically low 5.4 percent"

Sowell: "Those who vote on the basis of what the government can do for them are especially short-sighted during a war against worldwide terror networks. What good would it do to get free prescription drugs forever if your forever is likely to be cut short by more attacks like those on September 11, 2001?"

Myths about U.S. workers: "The claim that a large part of the American population can make ends meet only with the help of moonlighting falls on fertile ground among pundits and politicians who promote the view that something is profoundly wrong with U.S.-style capitalism. As John Kerry put it at the Democratic convention in Boston: "People are working weekends; they're working two jobs, three jobs, and they're still not getting ahead.... Also ignored is that only one-in-four multiple jobholders in America says he actually needed more than one job to meet expenses or pay off debt. This point is reinforced by the fact that the higher your formal education, the more likely you are to take a second job. Among Americans with a Master's degree or a Ph.D., multiple jobholding is almost three times as common as it is among high school dropouts."

Minimum wage myths : "Of all the economic myths my students bring to the first day of class, perhaps the most prevalent is that the minimum wage is desirable because, without it, employers would pay substandard wages. My new students -- by and large the products of public education -- have not yet had the benefit of being taught to think economically. If they had any economics education at all in high school, it involved being bombarded with graphs, charts, and curves, the meaning of which they never really were taught, perhaps because their teachers had never been taught either."

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